Tag: concert

There are bands you always wish that you get a chance to listen to live in concert, but being in India that doesnt often become a reality. Big Band concerts are few and far between and often limited to the same set of bands. Now the indian rock scene is an interesting one. There are more bands than you realise and they are all trying to fight for the top positions in india and believe me its not a easy thing to do.

Junkyard Groove is one such band. I first heard of them through Rajat. They had appeared on Channel V’s Launchpad and they apparently played an epic version of ‘Dont Cha’ by PCD. That piqued my interest and after a little bit of digging around i found out that they gave their music away for free download, actually they would get paid if people downloaded their music. So i got all their tracks downloaded and i was hooked. I got people hooked as well. I keep doing that. I am a self-confessed music explorer ever on the lookout for good alternative music. My latest find was ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ and before that was ‘Newton Faulkner‘. I would like to mention more but i digress.

So when i came to know i was going to work in Chennai, i was hoping to get a piece of the music i had heard so much about. But 7 months passed by and with no luck. I sincerely feel that finding out events in big cities(or small) is not easy. I know there is Burrp but that isnt always so helpful. For eg., i finally came to know about the JYG gig via a friend and more info via a Facebook event. I had to be there for the concert. I was not going to miss this opportunity and i started rounding up people to go along with.

Junkyard Groove had all of a sudden undergone a breakup barely a couple of months back. It happened on their Facebook page where 3 of the quartet decided to call it quits while Ameeth was left in the dark about the whole thing. Sad stuff. When i heard that they had called it a day, i was sad. I thought i should somehow finish a tribute post to them but soon i came to know that the line-up was reformed by Ameeth.

This was good news, but even better was the fact that they would be playing their first gig at nearby EC41.

So 17th July was the d-day and we made it in time. Bassin Bridge was headlining for them. Sajith played the Bass for them as well. So the show began and that was one awesome night. I missed the fact that i didnt have a camera to capture those wonderful moments. I had to make do with Nievu‘s android phone. So not much could be salvaged from that. Hardly anything is clear but then i could not be choosy either. The venue was wild, underneath the moonlight sky they played with the bay in the background. After the first few songs, me and Reddy made our way downstairs and we spend the rest of the night there. In front of the band, enjoying the music we swayed, barely a meter from the band. I didnt want it to end and i screamed the songs and headbanged through the night so much so that i had to take the Tuesday off ;P but i still say it was totally worth it. That was my #1 concert till date and i had the most fun. Even now as i write this post , i am happy that i was able to attend it.

the post is finally here.. here i recount arguably some of the best 4 days of my life!!!! This was my First time going to a inter-collegiate Fest as a participant and it certainly wont be my last 🙂 Had loads of Fun!!! If any of you are still in College do try to make it to one of these college fests and you will understand what im blabbering about!! this is going to be a long post and hopefully am going to put in whatever i can remember!!!!

Day 0: nothing special, we stayed away… only Bandish-Eastern Musicals in which our college took part… but didnt win anything in…

Day 1: ok from here on the things heat up!!!! First up that day was Dumb Charades or DC.. first of all my main aim this time round was that this is going to be a reconnaisance mission and if we are lucky we might even qualify for something????!!! ok ok.. now back to DC.. morning we registered and realized that we were pretty much bankrupt thanks to Naman forgetting to tell us that the College hasnt paid us yet !!! thankfully Karthik who was coming along later was our Bank for the day 🙂 we were introd to a couple of Rajat’s friends from MSRIT!!! and a supposedly look-alike of me (rajat’s main aim during that fest was to id the 7 ppl in the world who look like me.. we got as far as 5) Now DC was never anything like what we saw that day.. totally blew us away!!! here we were with our splitting words, codes for prepositions , and a few other things… but what we saw was beyond everything!! these people were Brilliant!!!! to qualify we had to get thru as many books, movies, songs and personalities u humanly can in 2 minutes.. we did almost 3. then we watched the brains….!!!!!! people who left me astounded were Bitch, Baba and Dey(MSRIT) and the NIT-Trichy Girls. ( both who topped the finals.. while the girls won the tie-breaker)… Naman and Nikhil took part in Hindi Events

After that was India Quiz..this was told to us to be the easiest quiz over there.. but it barely seemed to be… Rajat, Me and Karthik cud barely manage 13 out of the 30 prelim Q’s …

Wordgames followed this and me and Naman dragged the rest of the jobless guys to also take part in it… now this was a well prepared one but clearly we werent used to such stuff..Naman was good at those anagrams, thankfully… and we put up a decent fight in te prelims!!! Close to it was Scrabble.. met Sohail and Freya-the Aloysius team-now the best thing i answered that first day was Scrabble!!! and i even dared to hope that we would qualify for the finals!!!

after the first day debacle.. we were quite jobless and finally ended up acting a bit crazy!!! and i reached home somewhere at around 9:30.

Day 2: Started out with Pot Pourri and Art Expedition .. and me even giving an interview for the Mr.Incident contest.. we were improving, that was clear. it was one heck of a thing running between 3 simultaneous competitions at once but well it was good. For Art Expedition we turned up a nice model making use of the Pun – Join the Beet , for Join the Beat 🙂 The KK concert was in the evening and people were busy trying to rustle up some passes preferably free ones 🙂 i got a ” family” one somehow… but Praahas had already booked from somewhere else..sad. Since i was at Art expeditions and the rest of the college bunch who had turned up were watching Mad-ads , Rajat and Sohan ended up being late for the Sports-Ent Quiz. they even tried the Lone wolf quiz. the Q paper was seen by me while having Lunch. and it barely looked digestible 😛 all Arbitrary stuff from some corner of some book, movie or fact!!! Sindhu Turned up later on.. and 6 of us decided to go to the beach-the NIT-K beach where simultaneously beach events were going on… after a long walk we reached the ‘private’ beach.. Had loads of fun and clicked some good pics there… lots of people seemed to be enjoying the beach.. i guess for them the beach is a coastal luxury 🙂 at around 7 we headed back.. partly because the beach was closing and also the ‘scheduled’ time for the concert was 7:30. Met some more friends while we waited for the concert to start and ended up losing Praahas somewhere in the crowd. he ended up with the girls and some other classmates. KK arrived at 9. i used only 3 of my 5 pass quota. anyway after he came it was awesome!!!! My first Concert(official) of any Sort!!!!! it was good!!! his band was good!!! and was well worth the yelling that i was expecting at home 🙂 my cell battery went down and around 11:30 i was at the Hostel picking up my bag from one of the rooms. a quick snack i had, before rejoining the rest of the people back at the concert. Karthik left for Manipal in a cramped santro. when i reached the SAC , it was almost over. met the guys and proceeded to the food court coz everyone except me were hungry 🙂 met praahas( our ride back home ) and came to know that he and Kishore had somehow managed to sneak backstage and click some pics with KK !!! Finally it was leaving time, 11 of us somehow managed to fit in the Tavera including Prahaas ‘s driver. i reached home at 12:30 something. thankfully i had the Keys 🙂 slept at 1:30.

Day 3: we had already decided that we would start off late that morning .. i was the first to wake up after a 5 hour sleep. but ended up the last at the 11 o’clock rendezvous 🙂 we took part in the Biz-tech Quiz. did a bit better. i was happy with the answers of mine which turned out to be surprisingly right!!! but we didnt qualify!!! the rest of the day was not that great as the previous day. i got the pend drive of mine with the season 1 of ‘ How i met your Mother’ from the Nitk lan. watched Wishbone perform for Western prelims(my friend Claude was the Drummer, and i also knew the Vocalist,Canute) Sindhu was with me and we decide to check out the War of the Dj’s at the beach before we left for home . after a very long and tiring walk we reached there and found that it was almost over. exhausted we got a ride back to the main campus on the college bus. rested a bit and with Rajat caught the bus home. Naman and some more guys too joined us!! rumour also was that our results were out. Happily untrue. i dont quite remember when i fell asleep.

day 4: ok now this was getting a bit tiring and only me and rajat were ready the next morning , we had General Quiz hosted by Arul Mani of the karnataka quiz association. Sohail of Aloysius joined us to make it a team of 3. the prelims went on as normal..but something surprising happened… wait for it…we QUALIFIED!!! finally on the last day, we somehow managed to qualify and step up on d SJA stage!! it was another matter that after taking the lead in the first round( aptly titled bad word curry) we crashed out of contention 😦 but it was an experience that inspired us and might have been a bit different if i had answered Karl Marx and John Travolta. or if we had got Google Doodle right. but no regrets we had qualified. after this we watched the Pot Pourri prelims after a quick snack at the Amul store. i left for Mangalore at 4:30 to bring an end to the 4 day carnival.

Our college won in Kannada Quiz( 2nd), Solo and Duet Dance, and Suguma Sangeetha. definitely we enjoyed the experience and we are going to surely better ourselves next time round 🙂 Thanks to all my friends (Nitk and others) who made this a memorable event!!!

hope u enjoyed reading this 🙂 now to get back to studies.. internals in 10 days.